12/04/2011

Pigs?

Sunday was shearing day.

Before and after:

(those pink things can't really be sheep, can they?)

The shearer had a special table, to have a better position when working.


One-by-one there emerged some small, pinkish animals - pigs, perhaps? When the first was "done" and released, the others almost did not recognize their comrade, and there was a lot of running and head-butting.


Obviously they liked to be naked. The immediately tried to escape (and succeded).
Stupidly, we had left the plastic easy-to-move fence over winter, and it did not survive the heavy snow. We did make a smallish paddock with electrified wire, which worked fine as long as they were all woolly. Naked, they could crawl under... the bottom wire was a bit high, now the snow has melted.
When we had fixed the "winter" fence, they accepted to stay inside. Until... one managed to climb the stone wall (something they never even contemplated when woolly). She told the others, of course, and it took me a couple of hours to put up another piece of temporary fence.

The whites all are crossbred - we were told they were mostly Finn, but crossed with Texel (and possibly Shropshire). To keep track of what the wool looked like, and which fleece belonged to which sheep, I took a lock from each, fingerspun a short piece and labeled the sample. It appeares that out of four sheep, I have three different wool types.


(The two brown are Finn, and their fleeces are quite alike. And looks like typical Finn wool :-)

But, before I can do anything more, I have lots of wool to wash...

1 comment:

Laura Fry said...

Sounds like the day was full of adventures!
cheers,
Laura